Voluntary monkery.
This year's Fringe Festival was revelatory for me. Epiphanic, you might even say. And I just did. Hah.
The best show I saw in the 2003 Fringe was Scot Auguston's Gilgamesh, Iowa. Put simply (& stolen, I believe, from Rik Reppe), it was the most complete theater experience I've ever had. But when I wrote about it later, I concluded that I should box up all my paper, chuck the typewriter out the window, & resign myself to a life of data entry & office monkery, because I'd never be able to write anything half that good.
This year, the best Fringe show I saw was a one-man show that no one saw, called "WANTED." Paul de Cordova's meditation on how a grade school bully becomes a death row convict, why escape stories attract our interest so, & the Texas criminal justice system entranced me from the first word. de Cordova laid out a masking tape rectangle the exact size of a cell on death row, & about halfway through I realized that, apart from a couple of prop & costume grabs, he'd done the entire show from inside that rectangle. It didn't feel constricted or contrived. What it felt was brilliant.
As I was sitting in that tiny house in that tiny venue, I was thinking 2 things: 1) why isn't everybody & their Aunt Larry at this show? 2) I could do this. Given judicious editing & a raftload of rehearsal time with riverrocks, I (or we) could create a show every bit as moving, engaging, & affecting as de Cordova's.
What a difference that change in perspective makes. I still consider myself a playwright; Gilgamesh, Iowa is still a masterwork. But what a startling difference between a work that makes me want to give writing completely & one that makes me want to thank de Cordova for his contribution to art by creating my own contribution to art. It was merely a question of finding the form to which I'm best suited. This is what I'm pursuing for the foreseeable future (well, that & finally making the novel behave). I'm still resigned to a life of data entry & office monkery, because it's the rare soul indeed who can make a viable living doing this work. But at least this time I know it's monkery by choice. And I can't remember the last time I was so excited about art.
The best show I saw in the 2003 Fringe was Scot Auguston's Gilgamesh, Iowa. Put simply (& stolen, I believe, from Rik Reppe), it was the most complete theater experience I've ever had. But when I wrote about it later, I concluded that I should box up all my paper, chuck the typewriter out the window, & resign myself to a life of data entry & office monkery, because I'd never be able to write anything half that good.
This year, the best Fringe show I saw was a one-man show that no one saw, called "WANTED." Paul de Cordova's meditation on how a grade school bully becomes a death row convict, why escape stories attract our interest so, & the Texas criminal justice system entranced me from the first word. de Cordova laid out a masking tape rectangle the exact size of a cell on death row, & about halfway through I realized that, apart from a couple of prop & costume grabs, he'd done the entire show from inside that rectangle. It didn't feel constricted or contrived. What it felt was brilliant.
As I was sitting in that tiny house in that tiny venue, I was thinking 2 things: 1) why isn't everybody & their Aunt Larry at this show? 2) I could do this. Given judicious editing & a raftload of rehearsal time with riverrocks, I (or we) could create a show every bit as moving, engaging, & affecting as de Cordova's.
What a difference that change in perspective makes. I still consider myself a playwright; Gilgamesh, Iowa is still a masterwork. But what a startling difference between a work that makes me want to give writing completely & one that makes me want to thank de Cordova for his contribution to art by creating my own contribution to art. It was merely a question of finding the form to which I'm best suited. This is what I'm pursuing for the foreseeable future (well, that & finally making the novel behave). I'm still resigned to a life of data entry & office monkery, because it's the rare soul indeed who can make a viable living doing this work. But at least this time I know it's monkery by choice. And I can't remember the last time I was so excited about art.